33,32, 31

Three books this week, but really one was a leftover.

Zane Trace: Allan Wolf -An unusual story about grief, acceptance and suicide told with humor through poetry. Zane is your average, confused teenager. His family is crazy and he feels a little off kilter because of the loss of his father and his occasional epileptic seizures. He takes to drawing and writing on his bedroom walls and begins to believe the things he draws and writes become real. After the death of his grandfather, he embarks on a trip to Zaneville, Ohio to end his life, but instead travels along strange highways of the human mind.

A pretty trippy read done in an unusual way.

The Luck Factor: Dr. Richard Wiseman -I've bitched about my weird luck for years. Holidays and birthdays have always seemed like unlucky affairs: dark periods where I will suffer, go broke and feel like the gross underside of an old, high school desk.

This book offers advice on how to fix it. The basic premise is luck is really about awareness. People who let themselves pay attention and stop worrying so much about how bad things are or how bad they're going to be tend to have better luck.

It's a psychological approach to luck and what the hell, I'm trying it. So far, well... it's hard to say, but nothing too terrible has happened. I feel luckier, like good things could happen to me. So, maybe they will. We'll see. I'm just trying it out. If it doesn't work, I can always go back to bitching about the holidays and my birthday.

Age is just a number: Dara Torres -Olympic swimmer Dara Torres did the unthinkable in 2008, she medaled twice at the Beijing Olympics at the age of 41. She broke her teenage, prime-of-career, sprint times and smashed some of the ideas about how long someone can remain competitive at an elite level.

It's not a particularly informative book. She doesn't really explain how someone who is not her could do it, but uses her own struggle to remain competitive as an example of what can be done with determination, hard work and good science.